Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2002, Page 76

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QUIRKY CASE IN FAROESE
(1997/98). The following picture emerges
from the Faroese data. There is the verb +
particle berastfyri ‘to seem, to occur’ in ex-
pressions like those listed in (28). Note that
a nominative subject is ruled out (28b),
while the sentence is grammatical with an
expletive (28c). The sentences in (28a)
through (28c) are equally possible with the
expression koma fyri ‘seem’ (Lit.: come
for).
(28) a. mær berst fyri
me-dat. seems for
‘It seems to me’ (FD)
b. *eg barst fyri
I-nom. seemed for
c. Tað barst mær fyri
It-expl. seemed me-dat.
‘It seemed to me’
The most frequent verbs meaning ‘to seem’
requiring dative subjects in Faroese are the
verbs sýnast, tykja and tykjast. (29) illus-
trates sýnast ‘to seem’ with a dative sub-
ject.
(29) henni sýntist sum tær sýnist
she-dat. thought as you-dat. thinks
‘she thought as you think’
In (30) we have the verb tykja ‘to seem’
with a topicalized subject skipið ‘ship-the’,
which seems to be in the accusative, at least
if we apply the substitution test giving the
pronoun hvønn ‘whom’ with a word in the
masculine.
(30) a. skipið tókti honum illgrunavert
ship-the-nom. seemed him-dat. sus-
picious
‘The ship seemed to be suspicious to
him’ (FD)
In (31) we have examples with tykjast ‘to
seem’. The first example (31a) is only the
verb and the pronoun mær ‘me-dat.’. In
(31 b) we have a subject in dative, while the
object óslættarnir ‘irregularities’ is in the
nominative case. (31 c) shows the pattern in
Modern Faroese with a nominative subject
and dative object.
(31) a. mær tykist
me-dat. seems
a. okkuni tykjast óslættarnir uttan á
jørðini...
us-dat. seem irregularities-nom. on
earths surface...
b. tær føroysku lógirnar tykjast van-
liga manninum fremmandar
the Faroese laws-nom. seem com-
mon man-the-dat. unfamiliar
‘The Faroese laws seem unfamiliar
to the common man’ (homepage)
Summarizing DSC in Faroese
If we compare DSC with ASC we see that
it is always an experiencer subject that is
required with these constructions
We may summarize the data from DSC
in the following fígure, which is to be read
as follows (Fig. 3):
(FD)